I was born in South Wales, I was born in Pontypridd in the Rhondda Valley. I'm the son of a Welsh
Presbyterian minister who changed to a Church of England vicar, so we left Wales when I
was five. So a few years in the Rhondda and then after the war to Warwickshire, where
I grew up, where I spent the next nearly 20 years of my life, first of all very briefly
in Uneaton and then two country parishes, one called Temple Grafton just outside Stratford
where my dad was the vicar. We were there for six years and then moved just down the
road to a small market town called Ulster, old Roman town, where he was the rector. That's
where I grew up.
Was there a particular person or event that inspired you to become an actor?
There was a person, I would name, like I think many actors do, I would name the teacher at
school who produced, we used to say produced then, not directed, but he directed the school
plays when I was at Marlborough. I went to a boys public school called Marlborough and
Kenneth Keast was the name, I like to say his name to remember him. He was casting St
Joan, Bernard Shaw's play St Joan and because it was an all boys school, a boy was going
to get the leading part of Joan, wonderful part, massive part, you know heroic, complex
and I thought I want to play St Joan. I was 16, I was nearly six foot tall with a broken
voice but I thought I could do it and I got it and it was that part, I'd done school
plays before, I had done quite a few but it was Kenneth Keast directing me in St Joan
that really made me feel I could be an actor and that acting was a good way of life because
in the 1960s, late 1950s, early 60s, that period, there was still some opposition from
parents and school to saying I want to be an actor. You were meant to say I want to
go to university and then I want to be a lawyer or a doctor or into the army or that from
my school, a lot of pressure that way but I stuck out for being an actor. I went on
to university, I did, I went to Oxford but I spent the whole time acting. I treated Oxford
as a drama school really because I felt in a way that's where I really wanted to go.
But Kenneth Keast is the man I'd like to mention. My aunt, I had two aunts who acted,
one professionally, one as an amateur. The amateur one when I was young took me to particularly
the cinema and to the theatre in Aberystwyth where we used to go every holidays to see
my granny and my aunt Dolly was my favourite aunt and we were always in the cinema, I mean
every night in Aberystwyth through the summer holidays. There were three cinemas and they
changed the programme halfway through the week so you could see six films a week. I
actually wrote the Cambrian News, the local paper, aged 11 because one week there were
X films in all the cinemas for half the week and so I wrote protesting that nobody under
the age of 18 could go to the cinema for three days that week. It was my first letter to
the press. Apart from your aunties were there any other family members in the acting profession?
No but my father being a priest was a very good actor. I say that in the right sense
I think, I'm not putting him down by that. But I think if you're a really good priest
you have to have an acting ability, the ability to preach and to move people and to inspire
them to conduct a service with the love of the ritual. He loved music, he loved ritual.
He had a great presence and he had a lovely voice and so there was a lot of acting in
him and also of course you've got to act. You can have a flu that morning, you can have
had a row with your wife, you've still got to go in church and convince and so he could
do it that way as well.
You mentioned Oxford, where did you do your formal training and did you study with anyone
that we would know?
I didn't do any formal training, I didn't. Quite a few of us at Oxford turned professional
after our years at Oxford. We were very lucky in that we were always acting in the Oxford
Playhouse to paying members of the public. We spent long rehearsal periods and we would
have workshops where we would work on voice and movement and some of the shows we did
involved a lot of what I would call collective work. We did a final show at Oxford called
Hang Down Your Head and Die which we created ourselves. So that was very much a stepping
stone into the business and it went into the West End and it was through that show that
I really was able to become a professional actor, fairly comfortably I got an agent that
way.
I didn't go to drama school, looking back as I said earlier I would probably have liked
to go to drama school instead of university if I'd had my time again. I think that's what
I would do and I would certainly say now, young actors, it's probably best if you go
to drama school because you bond together, you get a lot of discipline work in the various
aspects of being an actor and I think you need that. But I enjoyed my time at university,
it was good.
Was there anyone at university that we would know?
Yes, at university I was there with Michael York, he was Michael Johnson at university
and he of course went straight into films from Oxford. He did Taming of the Shoe, an
accident and then a cabaret and had a very successful period, still successful but he
had that very, very golden period of his career. Oliver Ford Davis who is now acting, doing
some wonderful stuff and he's come into his age, I think he was a very mature actor at
Oxford. He's won Olivier Awards, acted at the National Theatre in Racing Demon and other
plays. He'd be very well known now and of course I was at Oxford with Michael Palin
and Terry Jones who I'm sure you know well.
Did you have to do any other jobs while you were acting?
Other jobs when not acting, yes. My very first part time job was I was a checker at a dairy
to earn money when I was sort of broke in one of my first summers. So I was counting
milk bottles and this is before we left Warwickshire, I'd just started being a professional actor.
I did that and I also drove a van for a friend. I used to deliver brush and comb sets, vanity
sets for women's dressing tables and my friend's father made them in a little factory in Ulster
and he said would I deliver them around the country and I used to pick up his van, little
van and go to Timothy White's and Boots all over the country with these vanity sets. The
van was never packed well so I'd arrive and open the back doors at Timothy White's Blackpool
or wherever and the contents of the van would tumble out and people would look at them and
say, oh yeah, Grace Associates. So I learnt to stop outside towns and pack the van. So
I did that. I've done driving jobs later on in the 70s, drove tourists around London,
picked up Americans at hotels, done that. And then more recently I've taught a lot of
businessmen presentation skills. Quite a lot of actors have moved into that full time some
of them and it was tempting because it can be well paid and I moved around a lot of software
companies, big ones like CSC and EDS and I'd work with teams of guys who were making big
presentations of their bids for big contracts and I'd work on their performing skills, their
presentation skills and I enjoyed it to a point but I think I've directed a lot in the
theatre so I was using that skill really but I didn't want it to take over my career so
on the whole I don't do it now, maybe an odd one off but it was very useful at times when
I didn't have work. I certainly have not worked all my career. You hear some actors say they've
never been out of work ever. I think, God, you are very lucky. But no, I have had periods
where I've had to do other jobs and that's what they've been.
Can you remember what your first television appearance was?
I can. I can. My very first television appearance was in Crossroads and it was two episodes
of Crossroads and they were episodes, something like episodes nine and ten and Crossroads
was only seen then in the Midlands and the Channel Islands because the other ITV regions
wouldn't take it. They thought it was so bad and I was playing an Irish television engineer
called Ted Roach and I had to enter the Crossroads motel as a cliffhanger to one episode carrying
a 26-inch television set and looking over the top of it and saying, I'm looking for
Mrs Richardson. That was my first line on British television and I think it's the last
time I've played an Irishman.
What about experiences of live television?
Experiences of live television. A few of the early televisions I did were live. I think
some episodes of the Newcomers were live. I think they were. My memory tells me that.
And also a BBC Two, which I forget what it was called, I know was live but my main memory
of live television is a production at Thames Television called The Night of Talavera in
about 1968 when we were just about to start and everybody was so nervous and keyed up
and you could just, you could hold the adrenaline in your hand, it was so solid on the studio
floor and we were just about to start and I was in the first scene, nine o'clock, counting
down and we got to ten seconds, Edward Woodward and me facing each other across a desk and
you could just see him like that and me like that and the number one cameraman who was
on the camera shooting on to Edward said, my camera's gone dead, my camera's gone dead,
camera, camera, bring me the reserve camera and chaos in the studios, this reserve camera
was hurtled across the studio floor and it got there just in time. That's my main memory
of live television and I wouldn't like to go through that again.
You've made several film appearances, how does working on films differ from television?
The difference between film and television acting now is considerably less than it used
to be because now virtually all of television is done as if it's film. It's done with a
film crew and a film camera, well it might be a digital camera, you know, but the set-up
is with a crew unit that is like a film crew. In the old days there was a big difference
because television was rehearsed like a theatre play for a week or two weeks or three weeks,
you'd be in a rehearsal room, you'd go through the scenes over and over again, the director
would give notes, say try something again, you'd try it again different ways and then
you'd go into the studio for a day or two days or three days depending on the length
of production when you'd suddenly record it all in one go, you know, and then they started
doing what was called rehearse record, so you'd rehearse a scene in the studio and
then you'd record it and you'd rehearse another scene and record it but you'd go through those
scenes, you'd go through the whole scene with four or five cameras covering the scene, you
know, in a house the cameras would be poking through windows, they'd have special traps
built in walls, they'd be out front in the fourth wall that wasn't there and it would
be shot from all those angles all at the same time and they'd be cutting between it in the
gallery. Film, you know, one camera, so when you went out on location for television or
when you got a film job it was very different because suddenly you were being shot, your
close-ups just concentrating on you, so I would say there was a big difference and you
slowly learnt that film acting required, it did require a different technique, it required
a much more internalised, you know, just showing everything if you could in your eyes and,
you know, feeling it, it didn't have to be projected in a big way. Television sometimes
was somewhat between those two styles, between theatre style and film style. Now as I say
I think it's changed on, people are either using film technique and trying to be as,
you know, truthful in an intimate way as possible or on stage you're having to be that on a
larger scale with more projection and reach the back of the audience. What was your first
film work? My very first film was Decline and Fall, Evening War's famous novel, set
in a seedy British school and then the society life of the hero after that, he gets involved
in absolute mayhem and I played his friend and best man who he'd met at university, who
was called Alistair Digby Vane Trumpington. So I had a tendency to play these sort of
characters at the start of my career and it was a big movie, it had Donald Woolfett and
Liam McCurran and Colin Blakely and Robert Harris and Donald Sinden and there were some
lovely performances and it was a reasonable success but I had a very nice part and I loved
doing it. Your first movie, it's very exciting, it was shot at MGM Studios in Boreham Wood
where they built amazing sets. We filmed on location in Oxford and in London outside the
Ritz I remember. Donald Woolfett was an extraordinary man, he was by then at the end of his great
great career as one of our great English theatre knights and he was being a bit of a scallywag
and I had lunch with him and it was lovely. A lovely French actress called Geneviève
Page was in it as well. It was a great first film and a lot of memories. You've also done
a lot of theatre work, do you prefer modern classics or Shakespeare? I enjoy doing Shakespeare
and more modern playwrights and I've sort of moved between the two. I had a period where
I played Macbeth and Richard II in Rep and I got a lot out of that. I think every actor
needs to play, if you can, if you have the luck to be cast, if you can play the big Shakespearean
roles they give you an immense challenge and an immense thrill to play them if you get
near them, if you can climb up the mountains that they are even halfway. Macbeth sort of
gave me a great regeneration of my career I felt in my mid-thirties. I'd had a period
where I hadn't done so much theatre and I came back to it and had a bit of a warm up
with plays and then I played Macbeth at Liverpool. I'll never forget that. And Richard II, I
played it a couple of years later. Again, only in Rep but it doesn't matter in a way
where you play them, the part remains the same and the challenge. Then more modern writers,
I've always loved doing plays of Stoppard, Simon Gray, Christopher Hampton, those kind
of writers. I like playing insecure, bumbling, academic guys. Plays like Butley and the Philanthropist,
Travesties, otherwise engaged. Some of my equus, I've enjoyed playing men who are perhaps
good at their academic life, not so good at communication and showing relationships not
being successful. It's fun to play those, they're a challenge and I've done a lot of
work like that. Yes?
One of your latest projects is of course the new Robin Hood for the BBC. What is it like
working with Patrick Troutman's grandson in his stories about this production?
Robin Hood has been a great experience and I hope will continue to be because we go back
to Hungary in a month to start series two. I don't know where to start really with stories.
I'd have to, well of course the main story of Robin Hood, first of all for Doctor Who
lovers Sam Troutman, who is in it playing much Robin's servant, is of course the grandson
of Patrick Troutman and has inherited the acting ability. His father of course David
Troutman also has inherited it so they're a dynasty of great actors. Sam's a lovely
guy, really nice and very good. I wouldn't have a word against any of the cast. We all
got on terribly well, even Keith Allen we got on terribly well with, a lovely guy too
and a character, a real character of course. The main drama of Robin Hood was of course
that the tapes, the master tapes for the middle block of episodes, episodes five, six, seven
and eight were stolen. Now the master tapes in the format that they were filming were
like the negatives of film, they call them master tapes because it's on whatever it's
on, whatever the quality of the tape is they're shooting on. And we were shooting in high
definition and we had this massive drama towards the end of the filming out in Hungary when
they went into the editing suite one morning and a pile, 200 odd master tapes had been
stolen. Absolute crisis you can imagine. It was on the news, BBC News two or three days
later and of course people back home they were ringing me up and saying are you that
bad in the series that you've nicked the tapes? It's a put up job, it must be, this is a PR
stunt. Then it was very good publicity but it was absolutely true. A disgruntled studio
employee in Hungary had got together with an accomplice who lived in the nearby village
and they plotted and they worked out, they could get into the editing suite, I don't
think it was very secured at night, and they stole this quantity of tapes, the size of
a fridge freezer I think if you put them all on top of each other and they took them away.
And then there was this process that we were kept, it was kept pretty secret what was going
on but the producers were in negotiation I think, approaches were made by these guys
somehow that they wanted money, I don't know how much, a lot. And eventually I think an
offer was made and that was about to happen because it was getting nearer and nearer to
the end of the series and if they hadn't got them back then those episodes couldn't have
gone out in high definition and that would have been a serious effect on sales, particularly
to America. So, crisis, but the police were now heavily interviewing everybody in the
studio and finding out what they could and strong arm tactics and I think eventually
somebody spoke, somebody gave away some information and they caught the two guys moving all the
tapes behind a bush near the studio. It ended like the Robin Hood story really. But they
got them and they got them back and it meant the series could go out, the whole series
in HD.
I actually held them for a moment.
They did but they didn't pay, I think it's correct, although as I say nobody knows exactly
what happened because cards were kept very, very close to chests but I don't think money
was handed over in the end. I think they caught them, they got them back and luckily. So I
think from now on companies, because every company heard about this, every television
company in the world will be thinking we must clone our master tapes because there was no
cloned, there was no identical copy and apparently you can clone them, but they didn't.
I forbid it. Your hair was a warning. Next time you will hang.
That is my problem. How can you be so selfish?
It is my neck. I am your father. This is my house and if
you... You fear for your own neck, that is the truth.
If you cannot obey me... I cannot obey you.
Then you leave this house.
Talking about Robin Hood, have you seen the Dead Ringers comedy show Take Off?
I saw it last week, I saw Dead Ringers last week where they are mocking the location titles
at the bottom. I thought it was great, absolutely brilliant. I can see why people find those
really annoying. I have begun to find them annoying. I just think a bit too many of them
and some of them are so obvious. I think if they had been used sparingly perhaps. So it
is going to be interesting to see if they lose a bit of pride and cut them or whether
they keep with them. I don't know what they will do. You can see it is a good idea, you
hear that arrow effect and you see Knight and Hall where my character lived. I thought
that is great. But then once you know that is it and there weren't that many different
locations I felt they were pushing their luck and I thought Dead Ringers did it brilliantly
actually. Robin, we have been summoned to Loxley Manor
by Marion. Robin, I fear that even now the Sheriff is forming plans at Nottingham Castle
for your demise. Come. Now listen to me you useless incompetent cretins. I want Robin's
head brought to me on the... Oh God. I was just getting up a head of steam there. Is
that really necessary? Look Marion just said I was in Nottingham Castle. Why do they need
a caption to tell them what they already heard? Are they morons?
Talking about Doctor Who a bit more now. When did you first become aware that classic shows
such as Doctor Who, I mean there are many others, when did you first become aware that
they had been jumped by the BBC and lost forever? I wasn't aware that my Doctor Who story had
been joked for some time. I didn't look on it as the greatest job in my life and therefore
I wasn't hanging on to information about it. It was a very enjoyable job as I said. Loved
doing it. And then you move on, you do other things, you do other things. I didn't keep
and I didn't start getting letters, fan mail for some time I would say. Looking back, through
the 60s, after 66 when we did it, into the 70s, I think it had gone almost from my mind.
And then actually about 1975 I lived next door to Tom Baker for about two or three years
in Notting Hill. We were in adjoining houses. And I started to realise through him and through
the crowds of children outside who discovered where he lived as to how popular Doctor Who
was becoming and therefore how the past Doctor Whos would also be popular. And I would think
it was in that period when I started thinking, I wonder if it exists, and then probably somebody
told me that it didn't. It had gone. But I couldn't put my finger on a particular moment.
I think it's very sad. I think it's really sad the BBC ditched so much, junked all those
episodes and of other dramas that I was in. I did quite a lot of television in the 60s
and most of that has gone. Black and white has gone.
Was it a nightmare living next to Tom Baker?
We had some great times, Tom Baker. I remember him taking me off. He said, come on, we're
going off to Jerry's. We're going to Jerry's and this club and drinking. And I said, I
think the drinking club were in the West End. And we went there one day and nattering and
chatting and doing crosswords. And it was about three in the morning. And then he said,
come on, we're going somewhere else now. And off we went. And then we were, I remember
going back on the bus at about 6am to Notting Hill where we lived. You'd hear his voice
booming with Marianne who he lived with. And you could hear their voice, his voice particularly
through the wall or on the street. It was great. Very good memories of him.
I've never worked with him since. I haven't worked with him, sorry, I haven't worked with
him at all. But I know him well obviously from having been next to him. An immensely
popular doctor, wasn't he? Immensely popular I think. Still is the perhaps number one doctor
of popularity.
You did actually appear in a production with Tom Baker.
Did I?
Selling Hitler.
Ah. Yes, yes. I've forgotten.
I don't know if you shared scenes together.
No, I don't. No, we didn't. A lot of people were in Selling Hitler. I don't know if you
shared scenes together.
I've forgotten. No, I don't. No, we didn't. A lot of people were in Selling Hitler who
I never met. Selling Hitler, also good memories of Selling Hitler because Barry Humphries
who I did have scenes with played Rupert Murdoch. So it was very interesting to see Barry Humphries
out of drag playing Murdoch, particularly playing Murdoch. You know, who he I think
probably despised, you know, but wanted to play him and played him very well.
My memory, main memory of Selling Hitler, I was playing the, sort of, one of the editors
of the Times called Brian MacArthur, a real guy who I'd met actually not long before.
By pure coincidence I met him at a dinner party and I looked nothing like him, nothing
like him at all. And he had famously, when they discovered that the diaries were forgery,
sort of the night just after they'd published them, Trevor Roper, the historian, Lord Dacre,
had gone to authenticate the diaries, he'd been flown to Switzerland. And then they discovered
too late that they were fake. And my character slid down a wall apparently in real life,
just absolutely in shock horror when the news broke. So we recreated that. But I'd filmed
with Alan Bennett who played Trevor Roper, the historian, and we'd filmed at Gatwick
when I was putting him on a plane to go and look at the diaries, look at these Hitler
diaries. And as we were about to do the first take of me and Alan Bennett walking across
Gatwick, he suddenly just turned to me and said, oh Clive Dunne, Clive Dunne's walked
into shot. And sure enough, Clive Dunne was going on holiday and was walking across in
front of the camera. And that's my Alan Bennett story.
Look, Lady Catherine, sensational. I'll never see another front page like that as long as
you live. I think I'd better ring you back later. Hugh thinks the diaries may be forgeries.
I'd better talk to Murdoch in New York. I've also got you appearing against other
Doctor Who's with other productions which you may not remember. You were in the same
film as John Pertwee in one of our dinosaurs. Ah yes, I did know that, I'd forgotten that,
John Pertwee in one of our dinosaurs. I was only in one sequence in that. And there's
a nice little story about that because you know when we film everything is perfect. You
know if you fluff, you dry, you retake it. Well if you watch One of Our Dinosaurs is
Missing Carefully, I play a reporter who comes into the office of Richard Pearson, I think,
was the actor. Richard Pearson who played the guy running the Natural History Museum.
And I come in and say there are rumours that a dinosaur skeleton has gone missing. And
if you listen to the dialogue very carefully you'll hear me fluff a word. I can't remember
now what but I saw it on television not long ago and I thought that's extraordinary that
that was put in, you know, they allowed that to happen. So it's always interesting that
people fluff in real life when you talk and yet filming they don't like it. They don't
like it. You know, you've got to be perfect. We've heard rumours about a dinosaur moving
around London. Wonder if you could throw some light on the situation. Dinosaur? Ridiculous,
they've been extinct for hundreds of thousands of years. Yes I understand that. Could it
perhaps be a dinosaur skeleton? Could someone have stolen it? Preposterous. Who would steal
a dinosaur skeleton? No market for it. How would you pawn a dinosaur skeleton, eh? You're
not making sense young man. So it couldn't be one of your dinosaurs, could it? Certainly
not. Not one of mine I can assure you. Not likely one of them wandering about loose.
I run a tight ship here. Could I see your dinosaur, sir? Would give me the background
to write a proper story on the situation. Of course, of course. I've worked with Colin
Baker, the brothers and the Carnforth practice. I did the Carnforth practice first. This was
a series I starred in playing the title role in the seventies, the early seventies. I played
a Lake District solicitor who was an aristocrat. He used to side with tramps and gypsies and
poor shepherds. He was a solicitor who, though he was from a good family, wanted to help
underprivileged clients who he could do something for and didn't charge much. It was a nice
idea actually. We did six episodes. Leonard Roster was in the first episode playing a
gypsy and it was a very strong opening episode. Colin was in one episode, Colin Baker was
in an episode about witchcraft. I remember, I can only remember it was about witchcraft
and he was in that. I went up for the Carnforth practice having not, you know, I'd had a fairly
quiet time and I was told by my agent, they're casting this Lake District solicitor and they
think you could be right for the part. And when I went for the interview, Colin Morris,
who was the producer, said, oh, you're very young. You're very young. I imagine this character
in his late thirties. I was only 30, I think I was 31, coming up to 32 at the time. And
he said, well, let's have a read anyway, have a read. But I, so I thought like you're doing
a lot of jobs, so I'm not going to get this, you know, they're going to look for somebody
older. And so I read it and I thought, oh, I want to play this part. You know, really,
I really feel an affinity for this character. He was a romantic. He, he loved the countryside.
He, he had complicated relationship, you know, he got, he's got a sort of dominant mother.
He got a brother he didn't get on to. So there was an interesting character there. And he
ran the solicitor's office in the Lake District. And there were obviously going to be big,
meaty guest parts coming in. So there would be a chance to, you know, play with, you know,
really good actors. And I read it and he said, well, great, great, go away, take the script
and we'll see how we go from here. So I then got a call saying, work on the script and
come back again. So I went back again and got it. So it was tremendous, you know, your
first starring role in a series you're going to name above the title. So you think, you
think that's it, you know, with all the arrogance of a young actor, you think, my career's,
that's it, it's made, I'm made, I'm made. Well, it didn't exactly turn out like that.
It was, it was wonderful to do and I really enjoyed it. But as it went on, I think I sort
of sensed that it wasn't going to be the biggest success ever. Scripts were very hit or miss.
They didn't all work as well as I would have hoped. And by the time it went out, it was
BBC Two in the first place, it wasn't BBC One. And they put it out pretty late, pretty
late, ten o'clock or something. So it didn't get enormous figures. But it had a following
and I still get people now saying, oh, I wish you'd done more of that. And they repeated
it so it was shown again a few months later. But it's become perhaps equally a regret as
well as an enjoyable memory. It's tinged with regret, the memory of it, in that it didn't
have the life I felt it should have done, both from a selfish point of view and I think
from an impartial point of view. I think it could have had more. But we filmed on location
in the lakes. We had actors, Leonard Rust in the opening episode, Maurice Denham, Pamela
Brown, Sheila Burrell, Amy Delamain played my mother. I just have very happy memories
of it, very happy.
Were you hoping that there would be some sort of follow-up to that production?
Yes, I mean I hoped even if there wasn't going to be more Carnforth practice, then of course
you hope that your career will then go ahead in leaps and bounds. Well, I wouldn't say
it did. In fact, for a period of years after Carnforth, I did relatively little television.
I immediately did something with Richard Burton straight after it, which was great. Richard
Burton playing Churchill and I played Anthony Eden, you know, when he was Foreign Secretary
in the 1930s, when he was a young man. And I met Anthony Eden himself, got photographs
of me and Anthony Eden and I was working with Richard Burton, who I'd also known from a
previous job. And that was straight after Carnforth. I went to the Brothers. But then
television stopped for a bit and I think in those days that could happen. And it might
have been something to do with me, I don't know, but I went off and did a lot of theatre.
So, you know, I spent sort of six or seven years then doing solid theatre and that was
great, and directing a lot. And I ran a theatre at Newbury, I ran the Watermill for three
years, which I'd always wanted to do as I was an artistic director. So then when television
came back, started coming back in 1980, the early 80s, I was ready for it. I'd had a big
chunk of theatre work. And since the early 80s, I've done a lot of television.
Good morning to you, Midway.
Going in or drawing out today, are we? Oh, drawing out, I see. Could you step into my
office, sir?
No, not now. I've got to get back to court. Money brief, of course.
Just a moment of your time, Mr Rumpel.
Gone right over the limit of our overdraft, haven't we, Mr Rumpel?
My overdraft? It's a flea bite compared to what you fellas are lending the Poles.
I don't think the Poles are making out quite so many cheques in favour of Jack Pomeroy,
of Pomeroy's wine.
I'm afraid in many things, Mr Wexford. It's not easy being a parent.
No, it isn't. It's a good thing people don't know that, otherwise they wouldn't dare have
children.
I could never feel like that. I've been a lucky man all my life, but I never discovered
true happiness until I got Alexandra. If I lost her, I'd kill myself.
Oh, come now, you mustn't say that.
It's true, I mean it.
It's about that blackmail note you were telling us about.
Oh, that. Ah, what about it?
Well I could see that you were rather under the impression it had been sent by my wife.
It was her notepaper.
And you would have been quite right. It was her who sent it. It's very stupid, very childish,
all those things, and she bitterly regrets it.
Why are you telling me this?
Because, well, it makes it look as if she might also have had something to do with Westwood's
death. But believe me, I mean all right, a bit of blackmail is one thing, but murder?
What you wanted to see me about?
No, it wasn't. I would like, please, your opinion on this.
You've seen that before, haven't you?
I'm aware of it, yes.
But you don't rate it professionally.
Many great men began their careers as amateurs. Mr. and Mrs. Flux are, however, what one might
call rank amateurs. Rank in the sense of being off.
So it's not a proper history book.
Have you met Mr. and Mrs. Flux?
Ah, yes, we have.
You mustn't confuse amateur dramatics with genuine scholarship. They are very interested
in a house called Wynyard.
Tom, don't let these people do any more damage.
I'm proud of you, son.
What kind of a question is that?
Just answer it.
No, I'm not proud of him.
Is that what you want to hear?
Why?
Because he's weak. He's spoiled and he's squandered every opportunity I've given him. But he's
my son and I love him.
Look, I know you don't believe me, but I am sorry for your loss. Truly, I am.
Tom.
It's over 40 years ago now since you disappeared in the Highlanders. Do you receive many letters
from your family?
I don't know.
ago, where just a regular number of letters, I've never counted them, but I don't know,
20 to 30 a year perhaps it could be, something like that, with various requests. I mean,
some years back I was sent the paper back, you know, the novelisation, and I was asked
to review it for one fanzine, so I did that. I remember writing the review of that, I had
to read it and try and get my memories back of the original, and I always remember, because
my father, like the telesnaps, my father had taken some pictures off the screen, and I'm
sorry I haven't got them, because I think I gave them away, but he'd shoot my name,
my credit when it came up, and when I was in a scene, and he captured me in episode
four of the Highlanders, coming outside the inn with my pipe, smoking my pipe, and I think
I'm right, that if you check in the novel, if anybody wants to do that, Gerry Davis,
if Gerry Davis wrote the novelisation, I don't know if he did, maybe somebody else did, but
whoever wrote that novelisation suddenly decided to change, and Finch comes out of the inn
and he lights a cigar. Do you receive many letters from any other productions? I get
a lot of letters from Bad Girls, I think I get, I've never had so many as I get for Bad
Girls, it has an enormous, well Doctor Who has an enormous cult following, but Doctor
Who covers a vast time period, different Doctors, masses of different stories, Bad Girls only
covers five, six series, I was only in half of one series and half the next, something
like a series four and five, but, so what the actors who play, you know, the long-running
characters get in the way of mail, I mean they must get thousands of letters. I can
see why it's so popular, you know, it was, Bad Girls is so outrageous really, it's like
a strip cartoon, every scene is like kapow, wham, you know, murder, blackmail, mayhem,
drugs, you know, sex, you get the full works told in a very wham bam style and it's very
watchable and more letters for that than anything else. I played the chaplain who had a nice
gentle sort of love story with one of the prisoners, Babs, the prisoner who was in for
begummy and they had a gentle romance which ended in marriage and we get, you know, I
get a lot of requests for photos and memories.
I was thinking, when we escape, why don't we jump straight on the Orient Express to
Venice?
Well that would be wonderful.
We might make up for having to put back the wedding.
Blame the Church of England and their stupid regulations.
I don't want to lose my job darling, we're breaking all the rules.
And I don't want to have to pretend we've only just met. Wouldn't it be rather we lived
in sin and were honest about our relationship? It's total hypocrisy.
You're absolutely right.
Why should we wait? Why don't we get married there? Make it our honeymoon.
In Venice?
Henry.
Just the two of us.
Lock up in two minutes.
As well as Doctor Who, you've appeared in a couple of other classic sci-fi serials.
What's your memories of Doomwatch? You had a recurring role in Doomwatch.
Doomwatch was a very interesting job. Looking back, perhaps even more interesting than we
thought at the time. I can't remember the details of every story I was in. I think I
did about six Doomwatches over the two or three series. But they were stories that,
they'd be in the news, some of them, just as the transmission went out, then it would
be a topical story. And Kit Pedler, this scientist writer who'd created Doomwatch, had this extraordinary
prescience, foreknowledge, whatever, of the scientific crises of the time. The way we
were heading for disaster, the way we were treating the climate, the earth, the chemicals,
what the industries were doing and what they were getting away with, what government was
covering up. So all those stories in the Doomwatch team were created to spot where there were
cover-ups, where there was something going wrong, how was it going to be solved. I think
it was very clever in that it was shot like a thriller, and yet it had strong, good scientific
content in it, because you knew that it was co-created by a scientist and every story
was possible. Breeding killer rats, chemical, biological, chemical chaos in a Yorkshire
village, closing it down and emptying the place. A lighthouse, my first story, a lighthouse
they discovered was emitting extraordinary rays that were causing people to go mad. My
character nearly freaked out, I don't remember how he started. I played a guy called Duncan.
I was always convinced he was the parliamentary private secretary to the minister, so he was
an MP. I always said, he's an MP. And then a writer would say, no, he's a civil servant.
So there was this battle going on all the time and I just said, no, no, he's the MP.
He's not the political private secretary, he's the parliamentary private secretary.
And John Barron played the minister and John Savdent also played him. It was John Barron
that was the one I remember. It's three o'clock. One and a half minutes past, probably everyone
gone by now. These flight schedules are extremely tight. I tell you, this whole damn thing has
been blown out.
The other classic sci-fi which leaps out at me is The Avengers.
Aha, The Avengers. The old Avengers, the original. No, not the original, no. No, the original
Avengers was Ian Hendry on a Blackman and Patrick Monee, wasn't it? The original. My
first Avengers, I did two, my first Avengers was with Diana Rigg, the gorgeous Diana Rigg.
And it was called, it was about a group of young fencers. I was a young fencer, that
was my credit. Young fencer. I'm trying to remember what it was called. I know what my
second Avengers was called. Anyway, I can't remember at the moment. But it involved a
lot of being in fencing costume and Emma Peel was sort of sparring with us. I just remember
that. I just remember being dressed as a fencer and doing fencing. But my second one, which
I did a year later, was with Linda Thorson. What was her character in The Avengers called?
Tara King. Tara King. And I was an army, sort of army special branch, army secret MI5 guy
disguised as a monk. And it's called Getaway.
Would I have gone into the TARDIS and would I have taken on a future role as a companion?
Yes, I'm sure I would. I'm sure I would. I had, you see the previous year I'd been in
the Newcomers, a soap. I'd done about eight episodes of the Newcomers which took a London
family out into the Suffolk country. They moved out to live in a little new town. And
that was the theme of the Newcomers. And it was the BBC's attempt at a long running soap.
Which it did run, ran for some time. And my character was the sort of well bred son of
the town where they went who was a bastard. And he seduced Judy Geason and all this. So
it was a good character to play. But after about eight episodes I knew that I had the
chance to go off and do theatre for a year. And I needed to do that, have a year in rep
and really improve my skills. And so I said I'm off. And the BBC said but we've written
the next 22 episodes with your character. This is what's going to happen to you. This
and this and this. They said we've written the script. I said but you didn't check the
manager, you didn't check with me, you didn't check I was free. You didn't even book me
like that. You only booked me for eight episodes. And I had the BBC for the only time in my
life, only time ever, begging, begging me. But I was a single guy who wanted to go and
do rep. I didn't have commitments, big commitments. If I'd had wife and children it might have
been different. I didn't have to pay big bills. I said I'm sorry I'm off. So I left the newcomers.
And so to come back after a year's rep to do Doctor Who and if they'd then said, and
it would only have been wouldn't it, it would have been three or four more and then it would
have seen how it would have gone, I would certainly have said yes. Finch in the TARDIS,
what a good idea that would have been.
Are there any roles that you would have liked to have been offered over the years?
Oh God yes, roles I'd like to have played. Well I said earlier about playing Macbeth,
Richard II in rep. Now it would be crazy not to say that I'd love to play them at Stratford
or the National. I haven't yet worked at those theatres. So rather than roles I'd want to
play, I do, before I end my career, I want to work at the National or the RSC in Stratford
or the Donmar or the Almeida, those theatres in London, I really would. I love doing theatre
and I'll be upset if I don't work there. And I wouldn't then expect to be playing the leading
parts as you get older necessarily. But just to work at those places. There are parts,
I love Chekhov, the Russian playwright, and as you get older there are parts. There's
a doctor in The Three Sisters, I'd love to play him in five years' time. There are old
guys as I'm getting older that I want to play.
What about The Globe?
The Globe, yeah, it depends. I think The Globe's quite interesting. First of all it's amazing,
I used to knock The Globe when it was being built. I used to think it would be theme park
Britain, I thought it would be e-oldie, recreation, novie, Shakespeare, playhouse, you know, aha,
come and see, to be or not to be. But it hasn't turned out like that, I think that's down
to Mark Rylands, I think he had a big success. Interestingly Mark Rylands doesn't think Shakespeare
wrote the plays. I find that extraordinary that he ran The Globe for... but he doesn't,
he thinks somebody else wrote them. No, The Globe would be a challenge. The Globe is for
big broad playing, what I've seen there, you've got to really be big in that space and hold
that vast, groundling audience that stand there, that's hard, that'd be a real challenge.
I've worked at Regent's Park twice, open air there, done three Shakespeare's there, and
it's great to do but it's a challenge when you're in the open air, big spaces.
Michael Edwin, thank you very much for your time.
Thank you very much Dean.